There's one human innovation that's so critical to our lives that every modern human group seems to have it. And you probably have some in your craft drawer - it's glue! Turns out there's a long history of glue-making that cements it as...

How much information can a human brain store? If we treat them like computers, one estimate is that they can hold 55 million ebooks worth of information. But why restrict ourselves to biology? If you had the right technology, how much...

Diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and sapphires are most of the classic gemstones adorning royal jewels. But they used to be accompanied by a stone that nowadays is most often found in museum gift shops: Amethyst. Here's the story of...

Science can help solve the world’s most important problems, and what could be more important than keeping pee off your shoes? Yes, even the lowly urinal—and those who use it—can benefit from the occasional peer-reviewed study. So let’s...

Whether you saw a quantum computer featured in a tech news blog post, or that Black Mirror episode "Joan is Awful", the chandelier-like look may have inspired the thought "Why does it look like that?" Well, it's not for the sci-fi...

Even though cleft lips and palates are really common, there's still a lot of research that needs to be done into why they form. But scientists have found a whole new line of evidence that might crack the case wide open, and it's in dog...

When particle physicist John Huth was briefly lost at sea, he started to wonder how the people around the world who navigate vast oceans figured their way around. What started as an afternoon activity gone awry led him to a years-long...

Soviet agronomist Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov was obsessed with plants. Especially finding out where domesticated crops first came from. And out of his research came a proposal that certain crops, like rye and oats, were evolutionary...

In the middle of the South Pacific lies Point Nemo: the most remote location on Earth. This super isolated spot is home to a graveyard filled not with human remains, but hundreds of broken up spacecraft and satellites. And after more...

Does it seem like your workweeks are full of bright sunny days and then every weekend, every time you make plans, it rains? It's not just you -- at least if you live in the Northeastern US, it really does rain every weekend. The reason...

What if ending food insecurity meant ditching charity models that haven’t been updated since the 1960s? Dion Dawson, TED Fellow and founder of Dion’s Chicago Dream, shares how he turned a spontaneous idea for giving back to his community...

The real lever of a meaningful life isn’t intelligence or hustle — it’s personal agency, says Cate Hall, former Supreme Court attorney and once the world’s top-ranked female poker player. Sharing her journey from the throes of addiction...

India's Roopkund Lake, also known as Skeleton Lake, is the site of gruesome sculptures of human bones. Many causes of these deaths have been proposed, from hail to divine intervention. But scientists now think that whatever happened,...

It's a hard world out there, especially for a little guy. So what's a soft-bodied animal to do? Turns out that marine invertebrates basically figured out the best defense system of all time, and nobody's a better demonstration of that...

So you've probably heard by now that a biotech company called Colossal Biosciences has brought dire wolves back form extinction. Or at least.... they SAY they did. We wanted to break down all the science in their claims, and get to the...

Are you an insect fetus who'd rather not get eaten by your siblings? How about a baby frog who'd rather not drown before getting to leave your egg? Well, you had better figure out a way to hatch when you need to.



Hosted by:...

There's a complex, mysterious current running throughout the Atlantic Ocean, and it's in trouble. But to help save it, researchers need to understand it, and finding ways to study it has been a challenge. But it turns out that the...

The number of people with Parkinson's Disease has doubled in just 25 years, but its rise has been much worse in some places than in others. <b<br/>r/>

Hosted by: Stefan Chin (he/him)

Today we're talking about the biggest snakes that ever lived -- like anacondas, pythons, and Titanoboa -- and how they evolved to be so big in the first place.<b<br/>r/>

Hosted by: Savannah Geary (they/them)

A huge number of vehicular fatalities are people who aren't in cars at all. Pedestrians are dying more than they used to and more in America than other comparable parts of the world. Here's why.



Hosted by: Savannah Geary...

Silfra Fissue in Iceland is a remarkable place where the Earth is tearing itself apart. Here, intrepid divers can reach out and touch two continents at once. But... should they?<b<br/>r/>

Hosted by: Reid Reimers (he/him)

Correction: This episode has some mistakes in our on-screen credits. The Writer is Tom Rivlin, the script Script Editor is JD Voyek, and the Fact Checker is Angela Reed.



Have you ever listened to someone speaking a foreign...

There are a lot of great debates in science, and a major one is when exactly humans reached the Americas. There's contentious footprints and wishy-washy stone tools, all of which has spurred some heated academic arguments. But the most...

In a nuclear explosion, how close you are impacts your chance of survival. But who you are also has more influence than you might think. If everyone on Earth were equidistant from the bomb, here's the last person...